Special Topics: Data Analysis for Continuous Improvement

Mixed experience. The course didn’t really feel like it met graduate-level requirements since the material was quite basic and introductory. I was also somewhat frustrated with how my final project went, since there appears to be a specific structure and response preference that leads to better grades - it could work out if you focus on more 'traditional' sectors like manufacturing/supply chain, but may get marked down if you do something a bit more unorthodox. I also don’t think the green belt certification is particularly meaningful in today’s context (may even be a red flag to have it in your LinkedIn).

I would not recommend this course to anyone who is not in the manufacturing business.

If you are involved in manufacturing biz, this may be good course as LSS is developed originally for the production proceess.

However, LSS is a bit out-of-dated and hard to apply to other industries.

Back to the course, it is hard to rate the difficulty and the hours spent. For one, the homework is easy and you could easily get 100 pts by only half an hour reading the materials. On the other hand, the project is harsh. If you are not in manufacturing business, you had better make up a imaginary manuafcturing job. The course and professor encourages you to apply LSS to your real life. But when you really did, TAs are not quite familiar with your industry and then you will just get a poor grading. TA will explain that you did not get this data and that data but for anyone inside the industry will know how ridiculous to get such data from clients. Anyway, if you are involved in manufacturing and you do not have too much time, this may be suited to you. Otherwise, stop taking this.

This course has lectures that are clear and easy to understand, the assignments are clear and follow from the lecture, and the final project ties up everything you learned throughout the semester. The majority of the course centers around the final project, so I think it's worth seeing whether the project is something you're interested in doing to determine whether this course is worth it for you. I was able to apply my project's findings directly to my current role, and I haven't been able to do that as directly with other projects in the program.

The main drawback is that this course isn't very rigorous. You don't get to the level of theory/math that you get in other courses in the program. If you already have a background in six sigma or process improvement, I don't think you'd get too much out of this course. However, if you don't have that exposure, it's worthwhile.

Overall, this is a good course if you need a lighter semester while you brush up on other skills needed for a future course/a good course to pair with a more difficult course if you're looking to take two or more courses in a term.

The class has been revamped for Fall 23 with brand new projects/assignments. So far the experience has been horrendous and I do not recommend anyone taking it until they work out all the kinks and have actually given some thoughts on all the materials, timelines, and assignments.

Reasons why it has been terrible: 1/ the assignments are not well thought out at all. Most of the asks make no sense. Students would raise questions and the TAs try their best to answer but it would turns out totally contradicting to what the professor say in the office hours. Evident 1 - homework clearly stated our statement must be measurable when the situation given is clearly not measurable. TA told us to measure some non-sense and turned the professor admitted in the OH they are not measurable. 2/ Grading time is supposed to be 1-2 weeks. I have assignments from 3 weeks ago not graded yet. The problem is that the assignments are built upon one another. Now I'm asked to do the second part while I don't even know if my first part is right. 3/ There's a big class project that is totally open and I mean minimal guidance and we are not allowed to ask for feedback if we are on the right track. They insist they will provide feedback in the designated timeframe which is November and the class ends in early December! So if you are on the wrong track, you are totally screwed. You will not have enough to finish a big project in such short timeframe. 4/ Office hours are on Thursday and it supposedly should be available within 48 hours. It usually takes long than that but all the homework are due Sunday. So if you do not attend OH live, you will never know essential info to finish the assignments. (See point 1 above). 5/ There's absolutely nothing I have learned that I can't just learn from reading a six sigma book. If the assignments and projects are better designed and we actually get feedback, I would say I learn something beyond reading a book. Since the opposite is true, Six Sigma gives me a very sour taste. Not only I want my money back, I should actually be compensated for wasting my time.

I rated the difficulty at 5 not because Six Sigma is difficult but the course is just terribly designed.

This course was easier than anything I had done for my undergrad. It was fun, informative and involved loads of application to whatever work or personal problems we had. I felt like the most difficult part was trying to come up with data/scenarios to apply the concepts for, since six sigma is applicable to especially manufacturing, call centre etc. environments. I ended up cleaning up my kitchen, playing beer pong, chopping some onions etc. to complete the weekly assessments.

The free six sigma yellow belt certification and minitab quality trainer certification are a nice bonus on your LinkedIn/CV, and the minitab course was a great intro/refresher on basic stats concepts. Another nice thing was the small class size and having the same TA grading my work and giving project feedback every week.

Those who say that average workload is 1 hour are wrong. The Money Ball reading for each week are 3 to 2 hours if you get an audio book. Plus videos. Plus assignments. Plus discussion in canvas. I'd say 4 to 6 h. I needed an easy class for summer instead of MGT8803 and I chose DACI. In the hindsight I wish I'd chosen Digital Marketing how I planned it. But digital marketing was so boringly covering in DAB 6203, so I switched to DACI. Now I regret it. The class was fine though. The professor and TAs were very good. I just don't think the covered material is so useful. I have mixed fillings that I could have used those 4-6 hours weekly better.

While this is notably not the most challenging course in OMSA (as noted by some students), the content and tools obtained in the course are very applicable & important.

The course provides you with a framework to identify and address problems—as well as a framework of how to weed out so called problems. While not the most analytically rigorous, as someone who has been in industry, I believe this type of thinking and question is very much lacking as is a necessary skill to make you a better data scientist, analyst, manager, etc. This course helps answer: how do you know what problems are worth you time? How do you get your leadership to identify problems? How do you breakdown and lead people through problem solving? How do you yourself look at a situation and break it down. As with many courses, you get what you put in.

Grading: many students complained that the grading was too harsh. This is silly. While the TA's do comb through the assignments and dock off points willingly, they rubric and expectations are published prior to the assignment. Follow this and you’ll be fine. Don’t and they will take points off—and they should. I am pleasantly surprised and appreciated all the feedback I received on my assignments! It's clear they care and spend a lot of time grading.

Sidebar: Should you take the course and want to go on to get your green belt or black belt, the course instructor (in the videos) offers certification as well: lee@leecampe.com (I contacted via LinkedIn)!

This course teaches the basics of lean six sigma concepts. The weekly video content is relatively brief and then a homework assignment is due each week based on the new material introduced in the videos. Each homework introduces a new technique or tool for collecting, organizing or analyzing data with a metric improvement mindset. There are also 5 discussion homeworks on the book Moneyball with deadlines that occur in the same week as the normal homeworks, so sometimes you have two assignments in the same week. The homework assignments are quite varied, but grading rubrics and examples are shown in weekly office hour sessions with the professor, so if you make sure to include all the components required by the rubrics you should get good marks. You will do an individual final project worth half of your grade, where you combine various tools covered in the homework assignments to gather data, analyze it and make recommendations for improvement for a metric of personal relevance.

The course revolves around identifying measurable metrics (“Y’s”) that could stand to be improved, analyzing them along with potentially related causal factors (“X’s”), and thinking about how you could influence the causal factors to improve the target metric. The material in this course is pretty easy conceptually. If you are looking for a course with technical depth, this is not the course for you. Even the parts of the assignments with some calculations can be completed successfully without too much understanding of the calculations since excel templates are provided by the course that allow you to plug in your own data and get results without digging much into the details. This course is much more about developing a continuous improvement mindset than learning about the mathematical aspects of six sigma.

Your enjoyment, learning and time spent in this course depend largely upon how much thought and effort you put into the homeworks. It is possible to get an A with minimal effort, but if you put more time into the assignments you have the chance to do some things that can make tangible improvements in your life. For instance, for one assignment I reorganized the cabinets in my kitchen and now I have easy access to all my board games at the kitchen table, so I’ve played more games with my family as a consequence. I also did a weight loss project for my final project and lost ~7 pounds during the last month of the course, which is not something I would have probably tried to do otherwise, and if I had, I might not have gone about it in an effective way.

In summary, this a low stress course that can serve as an easy A to pair with a tougher course where the benefits and learning you gain depend largely upon how much effort you put into the assignments.